The Great White Right of Way

The biggest production on Broadway this summer won't be in a theater. Rather, the show will be out in the street, starring the road itself....

New York’s Broadway is one of the most famous streets in the world. Here, it passes through Times Square, where 356,000 pedestrians a day compete for space with taxis and other automobiles. Photo by Christopher Swope.

“Pedlock” is a big problem in Midtown Manhattan. There are 4.5 times more people than cars in Times Square but only 11 percent of the right of way is allocated to pedestrians. Photo by Christopher Swope.

On Broadway at Times Square, pedestrian crashes occur 137 percent more frequently than at other major intersections nearby. Photo by Christopher Swope.

Janette Sadik-Khan, New York’s innovative transportation commissioner, is turning Broadway entirely over to pedestrians and bicycles where the famous street slices diagonally through Times and Herald Squares. Photo by Christopher Swope.

Times Square, after. The city closed Broadway to automobiles over Memorial Day weekend. By September, tables and chairs will fill the street, creating a new public space for New Yorkers and tourists. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT.

New York began reimagining Broadway last summer, between 42nd and 35th Streets. Says Janette Sadik-Khan, “We narrowed the road bed, put in a protected bike lane, put out tables and chairs, and lo and behold, the traffic moves just fine.” Photo by Christopher Swope.

Madison Square, where Broadway meets 5th Avenue, was also redesigned for pedestrians and bicycles, although Broadway remains open to traffic there. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT.

New Yorkers love sitting in the former roadway, even as taxis and buses roar by. There is no better place to see the Flatiron Building than in the Madison Square street plaza. Photo by Christopher Swope.

In all five boroughs, New York is turning odd intersections where roadway is underutilized into pedestrian plazas. The corner of 9th Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan was one of the first. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT.

The redesigned intersection still handles auto traffic but also gives pedestrians a place to rest. “This is largely a city without seats,” says Janette Sadik-Khan. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT. NYC DOT

Corey Blackburn stops in the plaza before meeting a friend. Without this space, he says, “I’d be sitting on someone’s stoop or the sidewalk. I say turn it all into grass.” Photo by Christopher Swope.

The biggest production on Broadway this summer won't be in a theater. Rather, the show will be out in the street, starring the road itself. New York City is shutting down two swathes of the Great White Way to automobile traffic, turning the asphalt where it criss-crosses Times Square and Herald Square completely over to pedestrians and bicyclists. It will be one of the most high-profile tests ever of what remains a radical idea in this country: that traffic can move more smoothly by giving cars less road to drive on.

It could work. Broadway slices diagonally across Midtown Manhattan, piercing the city's street grid like a dagger. This creates legendary intersections--Madison Square and Union Square are others. But it also snarls traffic behind stop lights that struggle to mediate the chaos. Shutting down Broadway's two trickiest segments is aimed at loosening the traffic knot by increasing green-light times on other roads. The city predicts that travel time on 7th Avenue, which passes through Times Square, will improve by up to 17 percent. Travel time on 6th Avenue, which bisects Herald Square, is expected to improve by up to 37 percent.

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But helping traffic flow is only one part of the city's reasoning. Pedestrians will find the new Broadway safer and more enjoyable. On an average day, some 356,000 pedestrians pass through Times Square alone; "pedlock" forces people to step off the sidewalk and into the street, where they're more than twice as likely to get hit by cars than on nearby avenues. The new plan will give pedestrians acres of breathing room--new public space carved straight from the roadway. And there will be tables, chairs, planters and shade umbrellas for people to sit down and watch the passing carnival. In the past year, New York has created similar living-room spaces out of underused roadway around Madison Square and at other awkward intersections around the city. When the weather is nice, those spaces are typically mobbed with people.

And therein lies an even more revolutionary idea. Of all the land area in New York's five boroughs, one-quarter is given over to streets--or more precisely, to the movement and parking of automobiles (that figure is even higher in other cities, such as Chicago). New York is saying that it doesn't have to be that way--and that car dominance can be reversed quite easily. The Broadway work will cost just $1.5 million and be done by September. As Janette Sadik-Khan, the city transportation commissioner, likes to say, a lot can happen with a can of paint and a paintbrush. "It doesn't have to take decades to get things done," she says. "You can make quick, transformative change that lends reality to the notion of a greener city."